Caregiving for older adults usually results from effects of chronic illness or frailty which may lead to transitions that may require informal and formal home care, relocation or institutional care. Caregiving transitions usually occur in response to some acute health event of the caregiver or care recipient, or when the responsible caregiver is no longer able to care for the older adult. Research on caregiving transitions in rural African Americans is absent from the literature. Similarly, no research on caregiving interventions specifically designed for African Americans was found. This Mentored Scientist Career Development Award will provide the candidate with the skills and knowledge necessary to establish an independent program of research in the area of culturally specific caregiving interventions. In conjunction with relevant career training, I plan to obtain ethnographic data (Phase 1) that will guide development and pilot testing of a contextually and culturally relevant tailored intervention (Phase 2) to assist rural African American families in planning for, coping with, and adapting to caregiving transitions that result from episodic or emergent health events. Specifically, the Phase 2 pilot test will use a quasi-experimental nonequivalent comparison group pretest-posttest design. The Phase 2 Pilot Test will include 30 families (care recipients, primary, secondary, and tertiary caregivers), 15 each in the comparison and treatment group. The intervention will be delivered to each family in the home, over four sessions, spaced one-week apart. The intervention sessions will include (1) information about health care and community resources in local towns, (2) instructions on strategies for navigating the health care system and resolving problematic issues, (3) identifying emergent health events and caregiving transitions, (5) decision-making about long-term care, and (6) legal and financial concerns. Caregiver perceived need for help, caregiver perceived need to perform caregiving duties, caregiver perceived self-care needs, utilization of formal services and total caregiving hours per week will be measured at baseline and 3, 6, 9, and 12 months post-intervention. Longitudinal data analytic techniques, descriptive statistics, and qualitative analytic methods will be employed.